Rudyard Kipling, 'A Death Bed'
A Death Bed
"This is the State above the Law. The State that exists for the State alone."
(This is the gland at the back of the jaw and an answering lump by the collar-bone.)
Some die shouting, in gas or fire. Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, cut on the wire. Some die suddenly. This will not.
"Regis suprema voluntas lex."
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"This is the State above the Law. The State that exists for the State alone."
(This is the gland at the back of the jaw and an answering lump by the collar-bone.)
Some die shouting, in gas or fire. Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, cut on the wire. Some die suddenly. This will not.
"Regis suprema voluntas lex."
( Read more... )
Comments 2
I was curious, and looked up the background. It was written in 1918 when Kaiser Wilhelm II was rumored to be dying of throat cancer. The quoted statements are supposed to be Wilhelm's, the rest by his doctors, or at least the italicized bits -- the unmarked statements sound more like a separate narrator to me, one filled with even more bile than usual for Kipling.
---L.
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